The Shine of his Heart
by CocoaWhitetail
Summary: *Sighs* I hate myself for doing this... The story is being told from Shining Armor's POV. He runs into complicated love stuff. The story takes place some time after The Crystalling.


**For those who are curious, I've harshly criticized a few shipping fanfics... most notably MLP. I was then challenged by someone to make my first chapter of a shipping fanfic so they can see if I can do any better. During this challenge, I only have a 1 Week time limit. Against my own free will to avoid writing a shipping fanfic, I accepted the challenge without a second thought, and here we stand. Is my first chapter any good? That's for you, the readers, to decide. I do have more ideas for this story in case people want to see more, but whether people end up liking this or not, this will be the _only_ shipping fanfic I will write. Have I mentioned I wasn't looking forward to making a shipping fanfic?**

My name is Shining Armor. As you probably already know, I used to be the captain of the royal guards in Canterlot. But things has been very different ever since I've devoted myself to my love, Princess Cadence. I resigned from my position as captain, I live in a castle along with Cadence, and we even have beautiful baby daughter! Sure we had some minor bumps along the way, such as a Changeling invasion and a demonic pony king nearly engulfing the kingdom in darkness, and I could've swore there was a time when nearly every pony in the kingdom had their life sucked out of them... but for the most part, life was perfect for us.

"Shining Armor, take care of Flurry Heart today. I have a meeting to go to."

...Or so I thought. You see, being part of a royal family can be busy work. Princess Cadence has to tend to the citizens of the Crystal Empire, while I am left to take care of the baby and make sure the castle and the guards are in tip top shape. Now that wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that we're always either too busy or too tired to spend time together. And the little bit of free time that Princess Cadence do have, she'd rather spend time with baby Flurry Heart... I suppose she hardly get any time to spend with her, so I guess that makes sense.

But lucky for us, the Grand Galloping Gala is coming up soon. This will be our biggest chance to spend some time together as a family. We won't be too busy with our royal duties, Cadence and I can finally spend some time together, all while taking care of Flurry Heart. I haven't felt this excited since the wedding! What makes it even better? Twilight will be there as well! I can only imagine the good time we'll all have as a family!

-At the Grand Galloping Gala-

"Shining Armor," Cadence said. "I'm going to spend some personal time with Twilight tonight."

"What!?" I said, shocked by her words. "But... I wanted all of us to spend the night together! You, me, Flurry Heart, and even Twilight!"

"Shining, we see each other all the time." She said with those loving eyes of hers. "We can always spend time together as a family. But it's rare that I even get to see Twilight, much less spend time with her. So I want to use this opportunity for us to spend time like we used to. You understand, right my handsome knight?"

"I understand..." I said in disappointment.

"Thank you, Shining." She said in a charming tone. "You are a wonderful husband. Oh, and don't worry about Flurry Heart. Celestia has already agreed to spend the night with her, so you're free to do whatever you want. This will be a special night for us all!"

She then left me with a kiss, and proceeded to spend time with Twilight. I couldn't believe it... I've been waiting for what felt like forever for this night, and I can't spend time with ANY of the ponies I've planned to spend time with! Sure, I didn't expect things to go _exactly_ as I planned. This is the Gala we're talking about, so something unexpected is sure to come up. But one thing I didn't expect is _all_ of them are too busy to even spend time with me.

It can't be helped though. The best I can do is either bear through the lonely night until either Cadence decides to spend time with me, or the night ends... I have hopes for the former outcome. I did everything I could to keep myself occupied. I've eaten some food, took a walk in the castle's garden, listened to some of the musicians' music, and even browsed the castle's decoration. Okay... maybe I am scraping the bottom of the barrel with the last one...

I did everything I could think of to keep myself occupied, and it hasn't even been an hour yet... the night I've waited for what feels like an eternity to come, is now taking an eternity to end. Perhaps I am going about this the wrong way... the main reason I am not having fun is because I don't have anypony to spend the night with. So the best solution would be to hit it off with somepony at the Gala. It would be nice to learn more about Twilight's closest friends, but they seemed occupied doing their own thing as well. I'll just have to choose a pony at random, and hope for the best.

"Hi. My name is Shining Armor." I said. "I'm the prince of the Crystal Empire. May I ask what your name is?"

"Umm... my name is Cheerilee." Cheerilee said. "May I ask what an important pony such as yourself would want from a pony like me?"

"Oh, nothing in particular." I said to the mare. "I kind of have some free time on my hooves tonight. Some might even say it's a little too much free time. So... what do you do for a living?"

"Me?" She asked. "I'm just a teacher that lives in Ponyville. Not as important as being a prince of the Crystal Empire, but I still like it where I am."

"A Teacher, huh?" I asked curiously. "If you like it where you are now, then you must be good with children. I happen to have a daughter myself. Do you have any kids?"

"No..." Cheerilee responded in a disappointed matter. "But I do wish I had my very own child that I could grow and raise along with a stallion that is right for me. Sure, teaching children is enjoyable to me. But as a teacher, I m limited on the things I can do with them... and on top of that, students always come and go. It's difficult building a long-term relationship with a child that could be gone before you know it..."

"Are you saying that nopony is willing to to give you a chance?" I asked.

"It's complicated..." she said. "Sometimes they don't want to give me a chance, sometimes they're taken, sometimes they're not the right one for me, but all the time, it just doesn't work out for me. I've eventually come to live with the fact that I may be single forever, so it doesn't bother me 'as much' as it used to. Besides, as long as I get to spend my life around children, I'll be okay."

Just to avoid making her feel worse about her personal life, I decided to end thhe subject right there. Instead, we just had more casual conversations, such as favorite colors, foods, drinks, our dislikes, our every day life, things like that. It may have not seemed like much, but again, it's better than spending the night alone. In between the conversations, we had a few drinks (nothing alcohol related), took a walk around the beautiful castle garden, and even did a little dancing. She was a terrible dancer, but since we were having fun anyway, I didn't care. Oh, and Rainbow Dash eventually got carried away with showing off her moves, and accidentally caused a room sized tornado to form. To avoid being sucked in, I gripped on to a part of the wall with one hoof, and had Cheerilee in the other hoof to prevent her from being sucked in. So.. that was also fun.

Before we knew it, the Gala night was over. I'm still disappointed I didn't get to spend any time with Cadence, Twilight, and Flurry Heart as the family I dreamed of... but I got to meet and spend time with Cheerilee, so overall, I had a pretty good night. We stood outside under the starry night sky, saying our goodbyes.

"Well..." I said, sounding slightly disappointed. "I guess this is where we part ways..."

"Don't let the end of our time together get you down." She said. "You get to go back home to your Crystal Empire with your beautiful wife and child. That's far better than spending time with a simple pony from an average town."

"I guess..." I said, still a little disappointed. "Thanks for giving me a good time while my family was busy."

"I should thank you for giving me a good time as well." She said. "I'll admit, our time together is going to make it difficult to forget you. If our lives weren't so different, I wouldn't hesitate to spend more time with you on my free time. But I guess our friendship just wasn't meant to be..." There was a moment of awkward silence between us before Cheerile broke it by saying "Would you like a farewell hug?" in a slightly cheerful manner.

"That would be great!" I said, happily agreeing with her. As we were hugging each other, I felt some sort of... strong connection with Cheerilee. Was this friendship I was feeling? No... it had to be something different. Either way, it felt like I didn't want this moment to end. And this hug... it feels almost... embracing? What am I doing!?

I knew right then and there that I had to stop the hug right away. "Shining Armor, what's wrong?" She said, worryingly. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

There was no denying it... I was developing feelings for Cheerilee! I may have not seen a ghost, but if Cadence finds out about this, I might become one. I can't let my life go to ruins just because I knew a mare for one night. "Oh, nothing... I'm just a little chilly out here is all... you should probably get home before it starts snowing or something. I'll see you later!" I then left before Cheerilee could respond to anything I said... hoping she wasn't on to me.

 **Cheerilee's POV**

Something is wrong with Shining Armor... nothing he said in that one sentence made any sense at all. It's nice and warm out here, it's Spring, meaning we shouldn't expect any snow any time soon. Even if it were to snow, the weather ponies would make us aware of that. There isn't a single drop of snow or rain scheduled this week for neither Canterlot, nor Ponyville. And what does he mean by "I'll see you later"? There's an extremely low chance of us seeing each other again anytime soon. Unless...

 **Shining Armor's POV**

We're finally on our way back home. This night didn't turn out right at all... it's true that I enjoyed myself, but I enjoyed it for the wrong reason. I mean, sure it started out as a casual and friendly hang out, but... Gah! Where did it all go wrong!? Was I right or wrong for trying to have fun without Cadence? Would it have been better if I-

"Shining Armor?" Cadence said, with a worried look on her face. "You look distracted... are you feeling down about not spending time with me?"

She was half right. I did want to spend time with her tonight... but I couldn't tell her about the other half. So I just responded by saying "Yes... but I know how important Twilight is to you, so I'm glad you two had a good time together."

"I'm sorry..." she said. "Next time I get some free time, I'll be sure to spend some time with you. Okay?"

"I would love that!" I happily said. Maybe more personal time with Cadence is exactly what I need. That has to be it! But it's all up to Cadence whether she wants to spend her free time with me or not. I can only hope we'll get to spend more time together in the future.


End file.
